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“You’re armed,” he pointed out.
“I’m on duty.” With a shrug, Jackass moved Lamont’s suit jacket and sat in the old wingback chair, facing him. “As I said, we need to talk.”
“Good. You can start by how you got in here.”
“Joelle let me in.”
So, his dear wife was here. He was surprised that she hadn’t answered when he called. He’d figured she’d be waiting at the door to gloat over breaking up him and Ashley. “Let me see where Joelle is first. I don’t want her interrupting us.” He started to rise, but his partner waved him back.
“She’s asleep. Really, really asleep.”
Asleep as in dead?His eyes widened, hope in his heart. Maybe his partner was useful after all. He pretended to be upset. “Where? In her bed? What did you do?”
“On the living room sofa. You walked right by her. I drugged her so she’d sleep.”
“With what?” Lamont snapped.
“Same thing we gave Rocky. I roofied her. She won’t even remember that I was here.” Jackass frowned. “What did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know. You seem to be keeping a lot of secrets lately.”
A shrug. “The less you know, the less you could be forced to tell.”
“No. That’s not how this ‘partnership’ works. Who killed Lott and why? And how did you get that bastard following Morrow free?”
“One of my men and one of my men,” he answered flippantly. “That’s all you need to know.”
Lamont ground his teeth. “Why did he kill Paul Lott?”
Jackass met his gaze directly. “Paul wanted more money to stay quiet.”
No surprise. Lamont had never trusted Paul Lott, the greedy little bastard. He wasn’t sure why Jackass had, but the two of them had been close since high school. Lamont had considered Paul opportunistic and two-faced even then. As a teenager, Paul would’ve turned on them in a New York minute if he’d gotten scared or wanted to get in good with a teacher. He’d always been a little weasel. Now he was a dead little weasel.
“Thank you,” Lamont said levelly. “Now, how did ‘one of your men’ know to follow Xavier Morrow to New Orleans?”
Jackass’s smile was not nice. Not even a little bit. “Morrow called Lott, telling him that a man had tried to kill him. Luckily, my men were in Lott’s home office and intercepted the call.” His voice rose, hard as steel. “Turns out that Morrow shot his home intruder and ran. Stockman found him and failed to kill him, and you didn’t think I should know either of those things?”
Lamont took a page from Jackass’s book and ignored the question about his having kept Xavier’s location a secret. In hindsight, he’d been smart to do so. Looked like he and Jackass were both following their own agendas.
“I took care of Stockman. That’s all you need to know.” Flinging the man’s words back in his face felt entirely too good.
“Don’t be an asshole, Monty,” Jackass snarled. “I can bury you.”
“Do you plan to?” Lamont asked, remaining calm, even though his heart was pounding.
“No. I hadn’t even considered it until now.”
Years of experience had made Lamont an excellent lie detector, and Jackass was lying through his capped teeth. “Good to know. If you know so much, where is Xavier Morrow now?”
Jackass rolled his eyes. “Finally, you ask the right question. He’s with Broussard, but we lost them.”
“Fucking Broussard.”
“At least on that we can agree.”
“What about Rocky’s boy?” Lamont asked. “The chef? Did you torch them yet?”
Jackass made a sound of disgust. “We lost him and the lady PI, too. They didn’t go to Hebert’s house, we know that. I have someone watching the place. No point in torching Gabe’s house if he’s not in it.”
